Pain
by GoldenCherries
Summary: Just a very short songfic I wrote to Dido’s song “See you when you’re 40. House remembers Stacy and all the other painfilled moments in his life. My first House fic, please read and review!


Just a very short songfic I wrote to Dido's song "See you when you're 40", which can be found on her first album "No Angel". House remembers Stacy and all the pain-filled moments in his life. Obviously, the song is not mine, (belongs to the wonderful Dido Armstrong) and neither are the characters House and Stacy (those belong to David Shore). It's also my very first House fic, by the way.

The lyrics in the song are Stacy's thoughts on House, and I thought they were really fitting.

**Pain **

_I've driven round in circles for three hours  
It was bound to happen that I'd end up at yours  
I temporarily forgot there's better days to come  
I thought that I would give it just one more chance_

He gets up every morning, easing his way out of bed, dreading it every time. He looks longingly back at the space left on his bed, partly because of the comfort he knows it offers him, but also because he remembers that there used to be another space left on the other side by somebody else. He misses that other space.

He hates the way he has to use the word 'hobble' and not 'walk' any more, but is grudgingly thankful that he cannot yet replace it with 'invalid' or, worse still, 'wheelchair-bound'. Yes, he is in pain, all the time. He sees other people in pain, too, everyday, all the time. But they're different. Their pain is shared. Delivering the news to a person in pain is a moment he relishes, in a grotesque way, because he looks into their eyes, identifies with them, and thinks to himself, _Yeah. Sucks, doesn't it? When your whole anatomy screams out in agony like this._ But then he looks away and at the people surrounding the patient's bed, and sees pain in their eyes, too. And when he sees this, he believes that the pain couldn't be that bad, really, because it was going round, it was being shared. The people there were sharing it, defying it, not letting it condense and compress into a single human being. Together, they were a unit, and together, they would beat it. They were going to help their person.

He knows that look; he'd see it in Stacy's face when she'd wake up beside him every morning. Even before the infarction, there were times when he'd wake up and stare at the wall, remembering the countless hours of abuse he'd had to endure at the hands of his father, as a young child. He'd let this pain coil up inside him and eventually let it relentlessly eat away at his persona. Yet it was this persona that Stacy had inexplicably fallen in love with and chosen ti live with. Her reassurances, her words of comfort, her touch, her kisses… just _her..._ was a hundred times, a million times, _infinitely _better than his mother's had been, or those glossy pamphlets that had been handed out at Junior High with those preachy words printed on them screaming _You Are Not Alone!_ You were never alone if you had someone: _that_ was the truth.

When the infarction had happened, a new kind of pain had begun, and because the previous pain had never disappeared, both combined.

_Cos' I want, tonight, what I've been waiting for  
But I found, tonight, what I'd been warned about_

You think that you are complicated, deep mystery to all  
Well it's taken me a while to see, you're not so special  
All energy no meaning, with a lot of words  
So paper thin that one real feeling, could knock you down

And I've seen, tonight, what I'd been warned about  
I'm gonna leave, tonight, before I change my mind

After Stacy had left... it was yet, _another_ pain. He had changed since the surgery. He'd given up. The softer side of his character, the side that he allowed himself to reveal to her and only to her, he had closed off completely. He pretended that he couldn't be understood. He started to be mysterious, brooding, and his sarcasm and callousness just became worse and worse. It didn't have to be that way, but he forced it to be that way, because he refused to believe – he _couldn't _believe – that a new permanent pain had been inflicted on him. He couldn't forgive Stacy for what she had done, just as he knew he would never forgive his father. Therefore he created a shell that he knew would drive her away. That would push the cause of the new pain away.

_So see me when you're 40, lost and all alone  
being comforted by strangers you'll never need to know  
not sad because you lost me  
but sad because you thought it was cool to be sad_

You think misery will make you stand apart from the crowd  
well if you had walked past me today I wouldn't have picked you out  
I wouldn't have picked you out

He had been miserable for so long, now, that it was the only way he knew how to be – the only way that he _wanted_ to be. When she'd come to the hospital and walked up to him, with that wedding ring on her finger, and that smile he had not seen for so long, he knew that she was viewing him differently not because of the cane or the limp, which was why other people saw him differently, but because she was remembering. She was the only one who knew the person he used to be, and could never be again.

_Now I've seen, tonight, how I could waste my time  
and I'll be on my way, and I won't be back  
'cos I've seen, tonight, what I've been warned about  
you're just a boy, not a man, and I'm not coming back _

Over the next few months of her stay at Princeton, he could see the frustration and disgust in her eyes growing, day by day. She was disappointed that he had not moved on, that he had not changed. Perhaps she had come back hoping that he would be different – but for what reason? She was married now.

Yet that had not kept her from falling in love with him again, from making her decide to stay with him, from leaving her newly crippled husband. The one night they had spent together – it was bliss. It was happiness, all over again. The pain had left him, for those few precious hours. But he couldn't bring himself to make her stay. The moment she left five years ago was the moment that changed him – the moment that he knew there was no coming back from. He was in pain, always in pain – constantly mocking and snapping at those around him, even those who cared about him, never allowing his guard to drop for an instant. Never allowing somebody to try and understand his pain all over again.

Stacy didn't deserve somebody like that.

Nobody did.

OK, that's it… God, I'm so depressed now, lol. What would really cheer me up, I wonder? Vicodin? Nah… Reviews :P Please give me some feedback! I have a feeling it turned out a tad too melodramatic, but I don't know for sure, so I'd really like to know what you readers think. Thanks : ) Hope you liked it!


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